I recently changed my mind. It was such an unexpected and uncomfortable experience that I haven't been able to shake the feeling. It wasn't just a shift in opinion that bothered me, although the idea that I'd been walking the earth being openly wrong for years was bad enough. It was the whole process of recalling exactly where I'd spread this opinion, so I could trace the infection and offer a sheepish email of apology. With a paragraph suggesting we could share some better opinions in the future. Maybe during sex.

There was a time, of course, when I'd change my mind all the time. I could never decide whether I preferred Starsky, Hutch, Dempsey or Makepeace, and I'd cheerfully admit ignorance on important political issues, and eventually agree with whoever seemed most amiable and lovely. But ignorance loses its charm as you age, and a keenness to be taught seems vapid when it's something you suspect you should already know. So I shut down.

Richard Dawkins is the best example of my intellectual regression. When I first read The Selfish Gene, in a decade completely unlike this one, it was difficult - it felt like I circled the book for a year, poking into its explanations of altruism and genetic baton-passing. It was a slow process, but when the magnitude of it all finally broke into my head, blowing a gigantic godless party tooter, it's only slightly pompous to say I was elated. Reading The God Delusion, on the other hand, all I did was nod furiously and point at myself, and perform a little professorly strut around the train carriage.

And that's the other difference between the way I read the two books. Instead of hiding in my bedroom and curiously attempting to learn, I'd brazenly read on public transport, poking my winking face above the top of the book like a big preening atheist looking for someone to bitch with about God. The implication is that I've found out who I am, and what I think. And the only thing to stop my unchanging brain from eating itself is to imagine that any unhappiness I experience is something else's fault, and to launch into a series of thrilling affairs and extreme sports to stop it ever looking inward.

I've tried changing my mind before. I went to a gig, knowing that I hate gigs, on the strength of the band being described as "unbelievable, live". No member of that band did anything that could be described as "unbelievable". With regard to playing their instruments on a stage, all the band members did almost exactly what I thought they'd do.

I tried reading an opposing opinion. But that didn't work - I instinctively chose the gobby lunatics, with the intention of making myself feel moderate, sensible and lovely. The fearsome, inhuman force of their opinions gave me an excellent shortcut to ignoring their point: everything in their stupid head clearly makes this person, and everyone who believes a word they're saying, a gigantic tit.

So, that's me. A set of well-worn pathways, genetically coded to transform from an eager sponge into a reluctant crisis factory. I spent my 20s tucking my opinions in, tagging their toes and sliding them into the mental equivalent of those drawers they keep the space artefacts in on Torchwood. God, I even think Torchwood is an acceptable pop reference. I'm dead.

It was Jimmy Carr who snapped me out of it. Like all humans, I've cultivated a modest but firm dislike of Jimmy Carr over the years. So, when I got to meet a proper stand-up comedian, I asked him if he'd met Carr, anticipating 30 minutes of eye-rolling and tutting, after which we'd become firm friends and write a sitcom together.

"Actually, I've got a lot of respect for Jimmy," he said. "He's really put the time in." Taken aback, I reasoned that hard work doesn't make you nice, and he was probably a tremendous dick to orphans.

"And he's got a lot of time for people starting out. He's a nice guy." I wasn't expecting that. My black hatred dissipated, and reformed as a milky grey shroud of fondness - much like the dress Britney Spears sports towards the end of that Womanizer video. So, thanks, Jimmy Carr - you proved that I'm still alive. And you gave me a marginally better pop reference than Torchwood, too. Britney - she's fashionable, right?

• Jon Blyth is a video games reviewer jon@disappointment.com